Funny thing about fans they will complain, they will threaten never to watch, listen or go to anymore games but in the end more often than not they return to their team.
Such seems to be the case thus far anyway with the Washington Redskins where if the fans are indeed leaving the team you sure could not tell by the ratings.
Through seven games this season their ratings are almost exactly where they were last year at this point in the season. The Redskins have won the weeks overall ratings and still remain the #1 watched show on Washington television. So while the team remains 2-5 and going nowhere this season on the field they remain a perfect 7-0 this season on Washington TV.
Here is where things really get interesting ratings wise.
“Redskins Kickoff,” the outstanding pregame show seen on CSN with Chick Hernandez, Trevor Matich and reporter Keli Johnson is actually seeing some their best ratings in years. They are up a whopping 72% over the same point last season. The Redskins Postgame Live show featuring Hernandez, Matich, Johnson and Brian Mitchell along a number of special guests is also up 7% over last season.
Redskins Radio ESPN 980AM is also logging in strong numbers and both the pre and postgame shows are having no trouble attracting listeners or irate callers who want to dissect the losses.
The Washington Redskins remain the premier sports brand by far in the region and there may indeed be issues of fans not going to games in the numbers that they did in years past. But as far as radio and TV numbers taking a drastic nose dive I really don’t see that happening this year. As I said there may very well be fans that will vote with their wallet and not buy tickets but fans totally tuning out the Redskins on radio and TV simply is not going to happen. Fans do love to complain but they also love to watch the team.
Speaking of numbers here is what MLB Commissioner Selig had to say to Chris Russo of Sirius/XM radio about World Series Game 1 ratings: “We not only got a good rating, we got a spectacular rating. We got a 13.8 so it’s the best rating since the 2004 World Series and, actually, for a first game I believe it is the best rating since 2000. It’s up about 35 percent over last year and it was a stunning rating that exceeded everything and if this World Series keeps going as long as I think it will and as good as it is, Chris, we ought to be in some absolutely unbelievable territory before it’s over.”
